COVID-19 Policies can Perpetuate Violence Against Transgender Communities: Insights from Peru

Excerpt

Globally the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 disease has laid bare the politics and social inequities that contribute to the elevated distribution of illness and mortality among socially marginalized communities. While rapid structural responses such as curfews, physical distancing protocols, and travel restrictions have greatly curtailed the spread of COVID-19 and effectively saved lives [1], we are also witnessing the alarming emergence of policies that enact and perpetuate violence against transgender communities. Panama, Peru, and Colombia (though only in Bogota) have legislated policies to enforce physical distancing by restricting the mobility of its citizens based on binary understandings of gender and associated norms [2, 3]. Meaning that on alternating days women are allowed to access essential services and on the other days, men. What about people and communities that exist outside of hegemonic understandings of binary gender presentation and identities? As has become clear these policies are not solely logistically problematic for transgender communities to negotiate. The implementation and policing of these binary, gender-based laws have also resulted in direct violence perpetrated against transgender communities [4]. …